Forums | MacLife

Ribtorus wrote:

Low employment is an issue of opportunity and investment, not wages.

  Whether an employer will hire someone has nothing to do with the wage that the applicant is willing/able to work for?

Ribtorus wrote:

You want to preserve an underclass willing to work for low wages? Keep Wal-Mart happy.

Wal-Mart doesn't set wages for the nation.  It's a big employer, but hardly a [edit] monopsonist.

Last edited by charon (2005-11-21 12:23 am)

Tallgeese wrote:

Wal-Mart supplies inferior goods to its own workers and the majority of the low-wage earners.

I think Wal-Mart is viewed differently by the people who actually rely on its cheap prices.  How else to explain its commercial success?  (Which is not to say that it sells superior goods.  Maybe they are inferior.  But substituting cheapness for quality makes sense when you're poor.)

Last edited by charon (2005-11-19 6:47 pm)

charon wrote:

Tallgeese wrote:

Wal-Mart supplies inferior goods to its own workers and the majority of the low-wage earners.

I think Wal-Mart is viewed differently by the people who actually rely on its cheap prices.  How else to explain its commercial success?  (Which is not to say that it sells superior goods.  Maybe they are inferior.  But substituting cheapness for quality makes sense when you're poor.)

In college, I had little to no money. Sometimes I was in debt and couldn't eat much. I went to Wal-Mart a couple times and rather than do that again, I saved up and bought a lot less. Shopping at Wal-Mart is penny wise and pound foolish.
Hell, the U.S. government agrees. According to their whatever you call it study, Wal-Mart is no cheaper than anywhere else-  it's just that their stuff is crappier. What the report said was that if you spend $10 at JC Penney on a shirt, you get ten bucks worth of shirt and if you spend $5 at Wal-Mart for a shirt you get five bucks worth of shirt. It will be half the price - and half the quality, durability, etc.

No maybe about it. The stuff is crap.

Also, <what ribby said>

[MA] Flying_Meat wrote:

Ribtorus wrote:

This is great if you aspire to third world living standards for a big chunk of your population; the workers.

apparently you are not looking at the right sectors of the right third world countries. it works swell for them.

You can tell. Say, just how much do one of these guys get for making my $100 Adidas?

Surprisingly, there are some cases where the brand-name product is NOT the same quality.
Also, Wal-Mart has done research to find what products most people price-check, takes a loss on those, and sells most everything else at the same (or within cents) price as K-Mart or Target or what have you.

Minimum wage for restaurant servers who receive tips is only $2.13. Most restaurants who would be forced to pay a higher minimum wage would have to cut staff or go out of business. Leave minimum wage where it is.

SonicSamurai wrote:

vaeaglesfan wrote:

Minimum wage for restaurant servers who receive tips is only $2.13. Most restaurants who would be forced to pay a higher minimum wage would have to cut staff or go out of business. Leave minimum wage where it is.

Whoa Whoa Whoa there....this is something that really gets me. Resturants should pay the $5.15 everyone else gets. Im getting pretty sick of the need for a good tip to survive crap. The tip should be extra. Resturant servers shouldnt have to be screwed just because some smurf didnt tip them.

and a customer shouldn't put up with lack of service cause some smurf figures they are getting the $5.15 anyway.
I tip high for good service.. after all, i am a good cook anyway and can cook it just as good at home.
poor service isn't an incentive for me to spend my bucks anywhere.

As someone who works a minimum wage job. It sucks. Half my paycheck every week is paying for gas to get to work. I'm only 17, so it's not really an issue, but there's no way you can live on $5.15.

Just want to make sure thats established.

StaticAge wrote:

I have to wonder why the cost of living is so high when the price of life is so cheap.

them's quote material, son!

Alien wrote:

Some things have an inherent cost. Like human labour: if "we" (as a society) determine that no-one should fall below a certain minimum income for fourty hours of work a week, then it is easy to establish what the minimum wage should be. That is the inherent cost of labour. If a (potential) employer is unable to afford that salary, well, then apparently this employer is unable to afford human labour. As simple as that.

I disagree that anything has an "inherent cost" (or value, or worth) the way that you mean it.  Put to the test, the amount that people are willing to pay for labor--or any other good or service--is subjective and totally dependent upon the circumstances, not inherent and fixed.

Now, in a different sense of "value," I understand what you mean.  We commonly say that a human being himself, or a holy relic, is "invaluable."  But what we really mean by that is that those things shouldn't be for sale, morally speaking, that people should treat these things as having a value of infinity.  (But, notably, when they are put up for sale, their value is just as subjective and variable as anything else.)

But labor is for sale.  And as long as that's true, it doesn't help to conflate how much labor is valued and how much it should be valued, which is what I think you're really referring to.  Saying that a man's labor is "inherently worth" $5/hour makes no difference to the employer who can only earn $4/hour by hiring him.  The fact is that the labor is only worth $4/hour to him.  Commanding the employer to pay at least the supposed "inherent value" will just lead the employer not to hire him at all.  What sounds good in theory can hurt the intended beneficiary.

Last edited by charon (2005-11-20 6:06 am)

Pariah, you are so inconsiderate. You want to trample on workers' rights to work in a toxic environment with no PPE. For shame! You have no respect for individual rights.

charon wrote:

But labor is for sale.  And as long as that's true, it doesn't help to conflate how much labor is valued and how much it should be valued, which is what I think you're really referring to.  Saying that a man's labor is "inherently worth" $5/hour makes no difference to the employer who can only earn $4/hour by hiring him.  The fact is that the labor is only worth $4/hour to him.  Commanding the employer to pay at least the supposed "inherent value" will just lead the employer not to hire him at all.  What sounds good in theory can hurt the intended beneficiary.

Gold is only "worth" $1 a pound to me. I'm not going to be getting it at that price, though. Damn. There goes my plan for becoming a highly competitive jewel smith.

Your view of the labour "market" is distorted. What you're proposing isn't a free market, but rather allowing employers to capitalise on the desperation of the jobless. Social cannibalism, if you will.

,xtG
.tsooJ